Quotes by Alfred Russel Wallace

“The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the eatable part, and its consistence and flavour are...”

“In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.”

“In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.”

“I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.”

“To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur.”

“Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.”

“I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here at...”

“Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.”

“The smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable, though less so when it has newly fallen from the tree; for the moment it is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way to eat Durians ...”

“The powerful retractile talons of the falcon- and the cat-tribes have not been produced or increased by the volition of those animals; but among the different varieties which occurred in the earlie...”

“I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths [...] I can see much to admire in...”

“On the question of the origin of species Mr. Haughton enlarges considerably; but his chief arguments are reduced to the setting-up of three unwarrantable assumptions, which he imputes to the Lamarc...”

“I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of [Neococytius] cluentius from South America in the collection of the British Museum, and find it to be nine inches and a quarter long! One fr...”

“In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fitt...”

“He [the naturalist] looks upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth's history; and, as a few lost letters may m...”

“While upon the subject of plants I may here mention a few of the more striking vegetable productions of Borneo. The wonderful Pitcher-plants, forming the genus Nepenthes of botanists, here reach th...”

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloo...”

“We permit absolute possession of the soil of our country, with no legal rights of existence on the soil to the vast majority who do not possess it. A great landholder may legally convert his whole ...”

“'We live in a zoologically impoverished world, from which all the hugest, and fiercest, and strangest forms have recently disappeared,' Darwin's rival Alfred Russel Wallace observed in 1876.”

“If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world’s age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man’s share of that age; and anybody would perceive that that skin wa...”